Taste Test: Lollyphile's Maple-Bacon Lollipops

Due to popular demand and the fact that we love trying weird foods and candies, The A.V. Club will now regularly feature "Taste Tests." Feel free to suggest disgusting and/or delicious new edibles for future installments: E-mail us at tastetest@theonion.com.

Lollyphile's Maple-Bacon Lollipops

As you faithful Taste Test readers may have noticed, we're pretty intrigued by bacon 'round A.V. Club way. The first Taste Test was the Vosges bacon-chocolate bar, and we've subsequently tried bacon-flavored mints and bacon-flavored potato chips. We plan on eating more bacon-y things in the future, both on the clock and off. (On my desk sit three flavors of Bacon Salt and a small tin of bacon-flavored toothpicks.) So of course we were intrigued by a new company, Lollyphile, that's offering bacon-maple lollipops. These aren't jokey, gross-out treats–like Vosges, these guys take the task of foodcraft seriously. These ain't your daddy's lollipops! They look like glowing little amber orbs with big chunks of bacon–real bacon–inside. Ingredients: sugar, corn syrup, maple syrup, bacon, cream of tartar. And according to their website, not just any bacon or syrup, but pure Vermont syrup and "sustainable, organic, cured bacon." Foodie pops!

Taste: The Lollyphile folks sent us four pops (a package that sells for a whopping $10) and the reactions were mixed. On one hand, the combination of sweet and savory is pretty jarring–not really what you expect from a lollipop–and the smell is a little off-putting. But there was some strange enjoyment to be had from the mixture, especially the texture, which recalled the Vosges bar–once you get through the candy, the bacon bits are a little chewy. And the tastes are clearly as advertised: maple and bacon. Not nearly as good as running a strip of bacon through your leftover syrup on Sunday morning, but still fun.

Office reactions:

• "It sounds disgusting at first, but it's really just a more convenient way of dipping your bacon in the syrup."

• "They need to crystallize scrambled eggs and just get a whole breakfast-on-a-stick thing going."

• "It doesn't taste all that maple-y to me. It tastes like generic hard candy. Like solidified sugar. Except when I encounter a bacon chunk. Then it tastes pleasantly smoky and meaty."

• "Not quite the taste of bacon hitting syrup on the plate–which I'm not a fan of, by the way–more like a sweetened bacon lollipop."

• "I basically feel like I'm eating corn-syrup-covered bacon jerky on a stick. While there's nothing inherently wrong with that, I wouldn't fall over myself to repeat the experience, either."

• "It tastes how Snausages smell."

• "I quit, it's just too sweet. It tastes artificial, like I'm sucking on a packet of Sweet 'N Low."

• "The texture is weird. There's a huge chunk of bacon in mine, and it's all nubbley and rough. Though it's still not anywhere near as hard on the tongue as those damn Maxxed pops."

• "Pro: tastes like delicious bacon. Con: Looks like a lollipop that got dropped on the stove after a particularly messy breakfast-making, and wound up covered with schmutz."

• "I appreciate that the bacon chunks come out chewy, and that they make every lick of the lollipop taste different, because some areas of the pop are more bacony than others, and some are more mapley. It's an interesting assortment of flavors and textures in one lollipop."